Three things to make QR codes worthwhile

No surprises in this AdAge story about widespread use of QR codes that haven’t captured consumer imagination when it includes this statement:

“Experts cite three reasons that QR codes haven’t caught on.

First, people are confused about how to scan them.

Two, there’s little uniformity among the apps required to read them.

Last, some who have tried the technology were dissuaded by codes that offer little useful information or simply redirect the user to the company’s website.

None of this deters marketers, who seem to be slapping the codes on products for all age groups and demographics.”

Those three things have to come together to make consumer use of QR codes truly worthwhile as a mainstream communication medium.

Content is the easy one for marketers to take care of – offer something that makes it worthwhile for a consumer to interact especially when it’s still not easy to do so.

Maybe 2012 will be the year when those three things do come together.

Embedded Link

Why Marketer Love for QR Codes Is Not Shared by Consumers | Digital – Advertising Age
Quick-response codes are everywhere these days. But consumers are not nearly as excited about QR codes as marketers are.

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(Image at top by Fabrice de Nola, used under Creative Commons license.)

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Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Fulvio Gerardi

    Hopefully 2012 will be the year these crappy things go away entirely. There are reasons people ignore them, and marketers need to wake up and realise they're a silly idea.

  2. Neville Hobson

    +Fulvio Gerardi Interesting perspective, one with which I wholly disagree ;) QR codes can be very useful. Trouble is, there';s a bandwagon out there at the moment, as the AdAge story clearly suggests. It is great, though, when you see some good examples of how to use QR codes effectively.

  3. Fulvio Gerardi

    Unlike things which are machine-readable (URL's for example), you have no idea what a code is going to do. Nor how much data it will cost you. And data is expensive, especially on phones. So no way I'm going to PAY to make some marketers wet dream happen.

    Now, if the scanning the code showed me something useful embedded IN the code, that would be different.

  4. Fulvio Gerardi

    No, I don't think it is the point. Because the codes don't contain content. They contain links to content on the net. Which you pay to download. And that's the objection.

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